


Anders’s Manifesto

by aban_asaara



Series: Shadows at Noontide [2]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 20:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11539863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: It’s not just about mages and Templars: she knows his strange, stoic brand of concern well enough, and if he can’t get her to see reason he’ll at least try to keep her safe, but he’d have better luck stopping her from taking the Maker’s name in vain.After reading Anders’s manifesto, Fenris tries to raise his concerns to Hawke, but it’s nothing that she doesn’t already know.





	Anders’s Manifesto

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, it’s been done to death, but I had to explore the ideological divide between those two. Bittersweet and funny, at least, or so I’d like to think. Content warnings for mentions of canon-typical, templar-related abuse.

“Is that—Anders’s manifesto? You _of all people_ have read Anders’s manifesto?”

Fenris’s gaze is dark when Hawke looks up from the pamphlet. “Have you?”

“You know I don’t read anything unless there are dragons in it,” she answers, flipping through the pages. No need, really—she knows the gist of it well enough by now. The Maker-damned thing has been left lying around often enough for her to recognise it without even having to read the title, written in commanding type with Varric’s printing blocks. “Is it just to better counter his arguments the next time the topic of mage rights comes up?”

The set of his jaw hardens in answer to the amusement that seeps into her voice. “He’s _possessed_. He cannot be reasoned with.”

“Ah, so then it’s to reason with me.”

He huffs. “Nothing good will come out of associating yourself with the mage. Stop making yourself a target.”

“Funny, when we told you to lie low, what you said was more along the lines of, ‘Let them come! Time to face the tiger!’”

“ _You_ would have no tiger to face if you did not insist on tugging the Knight-Commander’s tail.”

“And if Meredith thought that a medal and a fancy title would be enough to make me turn a blind eye while she violates Chantry law left and right, then she’s even crazier than I thought. Someone has to stand up to her insanity.”

Fenris lets out a sharp exhale through his nose, then grips the lip of her desk, hair tumbling over the furrow of his brow. “I … understand why you feel compelled to help the mages,” he says, and she can see the effort it costs him to admit even that, “but it doesn’t have to be your fight. Nor should it be. When Anders crosses the line, he will take you down with him. _If_ you don’t get torn apart standing in the middle first.”

Hawke knows—Maker, she _knows_ and she rues the day she publicly sided with Orsino. She should have left the First Enchanter and Meredith to their bickering and sailed back to Ferelden the first chance she got, but the Champion can’t just run with her tail between her legs while mages like her are brutalized, raped and made Tranquil for crimes they haven’t even committed yet.

“Ferelden’s loss,” Alistair said when she told him that Kirkwall was her home now. She believed it, too, up to the moment she said it. The King of Ferelden stood up to Meredith. Mages serve at his court in Denerim, where such a position awaits her should she only ask for it. Nothing is holding her back. Why is she still in Kirkwall, then, even as it tears itself limb from limb? Now a dozen half-written letters litter her desk, petitioning for some title in his court, begging for his protection, appealing to his authority to whip the Grand Cleric into action, but by now the entire city will sink into the Waking Sea before any of her letters reaches him.

So she’s still here in Kirkwall instead, trying to yell louder than everybody else as if somehow that would get them to see reason.

Fenris watches her, grim determination etched stark on his face. Her eyes drop back to the pamphlet as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. _The oppression of mages stems from the fears of men, not the will of the Maker_ , reads the page. “You saw what they’re doing in the Gallows. It could be me. It _would_ be me, if they had their way. What with my big mouth, they’d brand me within the hour.”

Something flits through his eyes. “I’m not about to let that happen,” he says through gritted teeth. “But not all mages are like you, Hawke. The ruthless few will stop at nothing to get their way given the chance, and the others will be crushed under their heel, along with everyone else. Not to mention the destruction wreaked by those who mean well but can’t handle their own power. Or have you forgotten Olivia Thrask?”

Her name is enough to conjure the memory of the girl succumbing to possession, skin stretched taut over bulging bones and frightful features, distorted beyond anything that could have been once recognised as human. “I haven’t, but have you forgotten that it was her own father—a _Templar_ —who kept her out of the Circle because even he deemed it too horrible?”

“More horrible than the end she met? Doubtful. And yes, a _Templar_ , a position he abused to cause the death of an innocent girl, however good his intentions were. I cannot fathom why you of all people would let him get away with this.”

Hawke sighs, failing to come up with an argument that would sway Fenris. “I just … I don’t know. It seemed cruel to add insult to injury when he’d just lost his daughter.”

“You are kind, though your kindness would be more laudable if it did not profit the unworthy so often,” he says, sympathy softening the edges of his voice. “You cannot help everyone, least of all Anders. He’s tricked you into thinking that helping him means helping innocents, but he will not stop at that, and when we have another Imperium to contend with, you will see just how much worse the alternative is.”

She forces a chuckle past the dread tightening her chest. Has Anders been slipping away all this time and she’s failed to notice, or is it only Fenris—well, being Fenris? “Is that what Anders has written here? Step one: publish manifesto; step two: trick Hawke; step four: freedom for all mages?”

He snorts. “He may as well have. You’re playing with fire—or letting fire play with you, I should say.”

Hawke’s gaze trips over his, then falls to the sheets of vellum on the desk, flecked with afternoon light dyed the colour of his eyes as it slants through the half-empty bottle of Orlesian liqueur she shared with Isabela and Merrill, playing dress-up with her gowns last evening. Fenris waits, patient. It’s not just about mages and Templars: she knows his strange, stoic brand of concern well enough, and if he can’t get her to see reason he’ll at least try to keep her safe, but he’d have better luck stopping her from taking the Maker’s name in vain. “You know, I just thought of something. What if there was an order of mages to oversee the Templars, and Templars to oversee those mages and so on? Concentric Circles of Magi,” she exclaims, slamming her fist into the palm of her hand. “Champion of Kirkwall, _and_ a genius.”

“Jest all you want, Hawke. Once given a taste of power, never again can mages slake their thirst. This city should be proof enough.”

“Ferelden hasn’t yet erupted into flames, and there’s a mage advising the throne.”

Fenris wrinkles his nose like he’d just gotten a whiff of something foul. “The barbarian king is even stupider than he looks if he appointed an advisor capable of mind control to his own court.”

“Yes, well, he also has an elven advisor, so you know. Probably.”

He rolls his eyes, but there’s the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. “Then I hope the fool has an easier time reasoning with your king than I with you. Watch yourself around the mage. There may be … less of him left than you realise.” The way he looks at her then is enough to rouse the familiar ache inside her breast, like the last three years hadn’t come to pass. _Maker, have mercy on this fool woman_. “Just don’t go to the Gallows again without me. If I can’t talk you out of leaping into the fire, I’ll have to pull you out of it.”

Now would be as good a time as any to stop being in love with him. She hasn’t been waiting, not exactly, because that would be insane, but between her mother’s death, her long recovery after the duel, and now the rising tension in Kirkwall, she hasn’t had time to look elsewhere—or even to move on, she realises, the swelling in her chest now impossible to ignore. Her skin is still haunted by the ghost of his touch, her heart still possessed by him like the most pathetic abomination there ever was.

That’s Hawke: impervious to demons and their temptations, but throw one handsome elf her way and she’s done for.

“Thank you, Fenris,” she says, though it falls short of everything she wants to say.

“My sword arm is yours, as always.”

“Just the sword arm? Better than nothing, I suppose.”

Fenris laughs under his breath, the sound low and deep and all too rare, but then his eyes meet hers for half a heartbeat—or what would be a heartbeat if her own heart hadn’t just broken at the sight of that hurt in his gaze, seldom glimpsed but always there. “I’m yours, Hawke,” he says, and then it’s gone—and then _he’s_ gone, halfway out the door already after taking his leave with a simple nod of his head, and Hawke nearly has to cast a glyph of paralysis to keep herself from going after him.


End file.
